Boeing turned its back on what had made it a great company . . . and has paid the price. From Henry Johnston at swentr.site:
What was once essentially a collective of engineers known for innovation and craftsmanship now operates in the interests of Wall Street
The first Boeing 707 long-range narrow-body four-engine commercial jet airliner arrives at London Heathrow Airport on April 29, 1960 © Central Press/Getty Images
On a sunny day in August 1955 Boeing test pilot Alvin ‘Tex’ Johnston was to take the Dash-80, the prototype of the Boeing 707, out for a test flight at an annual hydroplane race over Lake Washington near Seattle. The large crowd gathered for the event included many of the top names in the aviation industry.
Rather than perform a simple flyover, the swaggering Tex, who got his start flying crazy loops on daredevil flights on a tri-motor plane across the dusty plains of Kansas, aimed to impress the gathered luminaries. Instead, he put the plane into a stunning barnstormer-like double barrel roll that left the crowd below astonished and his boss, Boeing CEO Bill Allen, mortified that the newly crafted jet was out of control and about to crash.
It was a fitting gesture for a plane whose very genesis was the result of a huge gamble. As the 1950s dawned, Boeing was at a crossroads. Having thus far thrived as a manufacturer of military aircraft whose modest forays into commercial aviation had met little success, the company needed direction as its defense contracts had mostly dried up with World War II over and the Korean War winding down.
It was at this time that CEO Bill Allen decided to bet the house – $16 million to be exact, a huge sum in those days – on building a jet transport prototype. It is hard to overstate how ambitious this project was. Not a single customer had committed to buying the plane, and it was hardly clear that such an aircraft would be viable in the market. “The only thing wrong with the jet planes of today,” said the head of TransWorld Airlines around that time, “is that they won’t make any money.”
All that faded glory for FUSA.
These things happen in the Long March of the Frankfurt School to burn it all down by any means necessary.
Don’t get demoralized and no apparatchiks or crony capitalist corksuckers will be harmed in the engineered soon to go out of control collapse.
Forward, yes we can!